


an inkling and a notion

by floralin



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beach, Angst, Coming of Age, Falling In Love, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Merpeople, Slow Burn, johnjae are best friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23400892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralin/pseuds/floralin
Summary: Jaehyun and Johnny spend five weeks every year together under the scorching midsummer heat and the cries of seagulls luring them out to sea. Things are the way they are, and both of them are content to leave it like that.That is, until Ten crashes into their lives, all sharp wit and blinding grins, and Jaehyun and Johnny learn a little more about life and love as they balance the struggles of growing up, learning how to communicate, and hiding a ‘nonexistent’ being from the rest of the world.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Suh Youngho | Johnny, Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten, Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Suh Youngho | Johnny, Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 10
Kudos: 47





	1. city

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the [playlist](http://open.spotify.com/playlist/29JRgCYNs5JmXYEmD7ZGKj?si=rT0rlbN9StawJO2z-wnWBA) for this fic
> 
> important notes before reading:  
>   
> \- despite my research, the geography of manhattan beach in this au is entirely fictional and there's a 99.9% chance the real layout of the city does not match the fic's descriptions  
> \- there will be mentions of non-descriptive injuries throughout the fic plus one near-death encounter (no violence involved)  
> \- since this story is mostly ( _mostly_ ) from jaehyun’s pov, johnjae and jaeten are the main focuses, though johnten is obviously still included, no worries, i am a johnten enthusiast and they’ll have their moments :D  
> \- this is my first time writing for ot3 so i’m rather inexperienced and i apologize hh  
> \- title taken from [loved the ocean — emilia ali](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CoFe0ndHvE)  
>   
> please enjoy <3

It starts in the summer, just like all typical fleeting, forgotten things do—heat running in waves down tired backsides, eyes squinted through the blinding glare, hearts light and free and quick to love.

But summer is a peculiar season—it runs fast and drags slow; the few months free of school and homework pass too quickly for the hours spent lying in the shade, popsicles in mouths to combat the burn of the sun, to feel like forever. And like the contrast in time, there are some events in the summer that spin lifetimes together despite the briefness of it all, knitting multiple threads into a single string of fate.

A boy looking no older than eight picks up the thrown-away shovel of another tearstained child. Hesitant smiles, a friendly hand extended as the tool is returned; something begins then as they meet eyes, smudged with wet sand and sea salt and other such things children like to get in.

Two strings entangle with a single phrase, knotting together in the abstract space bursting with billions of threaded patterns to mark the beginning of something grand, one of those rare yet beautiful things a single moment of summer can bring, and the lives of these two children, so different and so far apart, are now intertwined.

“Hey. Wanna play with me?”

•••

Jaehyun is seven years old when he moves from the metallic, structural bustle of Seoul to the city of Manhattan Beach in California, cheeks round with baby fat and eyes filled with childlike wonder, the jumble of basic English phrases an unfamiliar taste in his mouth.

He’s seven years old when he runs and hides behind his mother’s legs from the other kids who stare at him strangely. One asks their parent something, the foreign words too quick for him to follow, and the adult replies gently, a hand on the child’s shoulder. Jaehyun knows what they asked even though he can’t understand English yet. He bites his lip and reviews his ABC’s just a little harder every time it happens.

He’s seven years old when they’re at the beach and a boy picks up his blue plastic shovel, thrown away in frustration, and asks him in perfect Korean (Jaehyun’s mouth drops open in shock) if he wants to play together. He’s seven years old when Johnny comes into his life, bold and friendly, with his loud laugh and goofy smile and perfect English, a whole year older and from Chicago, and Jaehyun is starstruck.

Johnny Suh is eight years old and makes lots of friends on the beach who all laugh at his antics and jokes Jaehyun hopes he’ll be fluent enough to understand soon—and Johnny ruffles his hair and pats his back and introduces him to everyone (“Guys, this is Jaehyun! He just moved here from Korea, so he’s still learning English, and you all better be nice to him!”)—and Jaehyun thinks that Johnny is the first thing about America that makes him feel like he could have a home here.

Learning English comes easier when Johnny’s squeezed into the couch with him, a large children’s dictionary splayed across their laps, patiently pointing at the words and explaining them. Johnny teaches him phrases and brings him around the people on the beach and slowly, steadily, the sounds grow familiar; the words come with meanings attached; Jaehyun’s voice becomes louder, more confident.

Slowly, steadily, it starts to feel like home.

As luck has it, Johnny has to leave by the fifth week. Jaehyun cries and cries and throws a fit that is almost embarrassing considering that he’s almost seven and a half, and it’s only quelled by Johnny promising he’ll write physical letters until Jaehyun is old enough to get an email—and that Johnny will come back next summer.

Jaehyun hugs him tightly when they say goodbye, and if he sheds a few more tears, they’re wiped away with a hopeful smile.

Just like promised, Johnny comes back the next year. And the next, and the next, until it becomes a routine for his family to spend five weeks of their summer vacation with Jaehyun’s. Their house is large and spacious because Jaehyun’s parents make lots of money and they always have plenty of room for Johnny’s family of three, no matter how much his parents may insist on staying in a hotel.

The emails that start in Jaehyun’s fifth-grade switch to calls and text messages as he enters middle school. With every passing year, Johnny gets a little taller, a little more handsome, and sometimes Jaehyun can’t escape the fear of the older boy deciding one day that he’s now too cool to associate with anyone younger and stops talking to him.

Jaehyun has friends at his high school, of course—there’s a surprising amount of Asians in the area he lives in—Mingyu, Jeongguk, Yugyeom, and many more. It’s not like he isn’t what they call “popular”. He gets good grades and his teachers like him and he’s never gotten detention and he has a large circle of friends who adore and trust him with the same loyalty he reciprocates.

It’s just that Johnny is special.

It sounds horribly cheesy when he thinks of it that way and he’s sure if he ever says anything even remotely along the lines of that thought in front of his friends, Lisa really will smack him for being hopeless, but it’s true.

Johnny has always been good and kind and patient with him, the first to do so when Jaehyun first came to the States. Johnny has held his hand through all the nerves of adjusting to a completely different culture and place and never so much as got irritated when Jaehyun used to struggle with his English and was reluctant to go out and play with the other kids, even if that meant Johnny himself was sacrificing free time he could be using to socialize to teach Jaehyun.

Things have changed; Jaehyun’s English pronunciation has long been perfected and he’s gained more self-confidence over the years, but Johnny has always been something else—something unreachable not just with the physical distance between them. Johnny’s heart and mind have always been in a faraway place, unanchored as if searching for something unknown even to himself—and Jaehyun can’t help but be a little afraid of the day Johnny does find that certain something—of what he’ll do if the time comes.

The fear grows into something more tangible every year as they get older, especially now that Jaehyun’s in the summer before his last year of high school. He’s survived junior year, withstanding the pressure of choosing electives and maintaining his GPA and a pile of AP classes leading to grueling finals. It’s a weird feeling, being at the age stuck between your teens and adulthood. Everything is still uncertain and the chasm between child and adult remains too wide, too blurred. Whatever this stage of his life is supposed to be, its last years are meant to be cherished yet everyone seems to be focused on grades and the societal expectations of their futures more than anything.

Not to mention Johnny’s going to college by fall.

He’s completed all the required courses for an advanced diploma, scored top of his classes and organized public events; pretty much done everything there is to do to get noticed by the best universities across the country.

Jaehyun is almost a little envious. Almost, if it isn’t for the fact that Johnny has absolutely no idea what he wants to do for the future.

And that’s okay, of course—he can figure it out through university; they have time, except all the meetings their schools hold for the entire student body always make it seem like they don’t. It’s the paranoia, always the paranoia.

Half a month into summer on the same date as last year (and all the years before), Johnny comes back.

Jaehyun goes to meet him at the airport—alone. There’s an unspoken line between the closeness he has with his friends and family and the intimacy he and Johnny share, and both his friends and parents understand to give them space.

He’s gotten taller, Jaehyun thinks without surprise as Johnny appears at the arriving terminal with a single suitcase and a wide smile, taking wide strides towards him. Things are changing; Johnny’s parents are staying back in Chicago this year because their son is eighteen and a legal adult and he’s entering what schools so gratuitously refer to as “the real world”.

Johnny doesn’t look like he minds it so much.

“Hey,” he says, brief. Jaehyun meets his eyes and the smile breaks across his face too easily.

“Hey.”

Jaehyun doesn’t let himself have a proper look at Johnny until they’ve gotten back to his house. His mother rushes to them first, cupping Johnny’s face and cooing the same things about how “ _You’ve gotten so much taller!_ ” and “ _You grow handsomer every year; I can barely believe my eyes,_ ” and, lastly, “ _Jaehyun, don’t you agree_?”, and Jaehyun smiles and wisely stays silent.

Like always, they end up on the beach after warm greetings and unpackings are over and his parents (mainly his mom) finally let them out of the house after lunch with their regular warning to stay safe. Same place, same time; early July means the public areas with the boardwalks and restaurants are always packed no matter what time of day it is because this is California and they live in a beach city that only grows more populated with temperatures, and Johnny and Jaehyun have long worked out a path far away from the crowds, a strip of shore cutting below the mainland.

They take their time, of course—Manhattan Beach is basically Johnny’s second home and there are plenty of people who have been waiting for his annual return. Jaehyun’s own group of friends are by the beachside cafe half the kids from school work at and don’t look the least bit surprised to see Johnny; Mingyu and Jeongguk both wave excitedly, tripping over each other in their hurry to get up, and Lisa grins from the counter, speaking quickly to the manager on duty before ditching her apron and stepping out to greet them with a hug each. She winks knowingly at Jaehyun when Johnny turns his back and he shakes his head at her so fast he almost gets whiplash. From his seat, Yugyeom laughs good-naturedly.

See, truth is, Jaehyun doesn’t remember when he fell in love. Hell, he doesn’t even remember when his admiration gave way to a puppy crush and that puppy crush evolved into a concept his seventeen-year-old self can barely grasp at. It wasn’t, isn’t and will never be something pinpointed. Falling in love with Johnny Suh has never been a matter of moments spread out between years where something drastic happens and Jaehyun thinks, “ _Oh. I’m in love with my best friend._ ”

Johnny has always been _there_ , simply a constant, comforting presence; he’s sat with Jaehyun through all his worst times and listened as he recounted the days where things felt like they were going nowhere—has always been the first to support him in anything—always made it clear that he’s just a call or text away, even if it means texting each other terrible jokes and complaints about chemistry teachers into the early hours of the morning on school nights.

Johnny comes back every summer and those are the few precious weeks Jaehyun cherishes the most. They learn to surf and have swimming competitions in the shallows and at some point, it just goes that all Jaehyun can think of is the way Johnny’s eyes crinkle when he laughs and the lightness in his steps and the warmth of his hands on _those_ days, the ones where they look back at the crowds of Manhattan Beach, loud and busy and exciting, and then at each other, and, “ _Yeah, let’s get away from here for a while_.”

Most of his friends know. It’s hard not to, and Jaehyun’s parents caught on years before he realized it himself, which would explain their reactions when he came out to them in eighth grade—the kind of memory you think back on and laugh at, but still not funny enough to reminisce over the dinner table because with it comes a duck-your-head-and-hide kind of embarrassment, something Jaehyun is loath to put himself through at any given time.

(Long story short, his mom hugs him tightly and his dad, though less prone to affection, offers a small smile and says, albeit a little awkwardly, “I know nothing about wooing guys, but Youngho already calls me ‘Dad’, so that’s a start,” and Jaehyun thinks he’s incredibly lucky to have them.)

Late evening finds them strolling away from the boardwalks and shops, the only sounds being the waves rippling and crashing onto the shore and a comfortable breeze masking the commotions of traffic and people from farther inland. The cave is visible from here—one they’d discovered when Jaehyun was eleven, angled away from the beach so only those who went out into the water by boat could glimpse it.

It’s still for all of five minutes before Johnny breaks; he grins and lifts Jaehyun up by the waist into a hug and Jaehyun laughs and clings on tightly, unabashedly affectionate as the elder spins him around a couple times before relenting. The sudden exertion has them both a bit short of breath and Jaehyun is sure his ears are glowing red, but Johnny’s still smiling and his hands are warm where they brush his arms and he’s always been charming, but even more so now; Jaehyun’s heart beats a little faster as he allows his eyes to drift over the soft waves of the older boy’s dark hair, styled differently from when they Facetimed last week. His face has grown more angular too, shoulders broader, and he stands over Jaehyun just a little taller, always a little taller. He wonders if Johnny has a girlfriend now.

“Earth to Jae?”

“Hm?” Jaehyun snaps out of his trance. Shit. (Someone’s voice chides him in his head—probably Lisa’s.) “Oh, I’m here. Just—sorry. It’s been a long day.”

Johnny’s eyes are warm. They remind him of honey. “If you missed me you could’ve just said so instead of staring and waiting for me to notice, you know,” he teases, reaching to tug at one of Jaehyun’s traitorously flushed ears, cooing. “You’re still so shy.”

“I’m not shy,” Jaehyun protests, batting his hand away. “Just distracted. We should go back soon. Mom might get worried.”

“I love your mom,” sighs Johnny, and it’s with the wistfulness of the old sailors in the area who talk about their adventures out at sea, some parts obviously exaggerated but the love in their words unmistakable. “Both your parents. They’re so great.”

Ever the clingier one (though he’d never admit to it even after being pointed out countless times), his fingers wrap around Jaehyun’s wrist, thumb over his pulse point. Jaehyun wonders if he can feel it—his heartbeat.

They walk back and watch the splashes of sunlight fade to the blanket of indigo curling over the sky along the way. The city glows at night, distant chatter from the famous pier crowded with tourists and residents alike an aspect of familiarity—the place is alive and full and stays this way year-round.

“Jae!” the calls always go as they pass by the theme park and through downtown, and sometimes Johnny’s name is heard as well from the long-dwelling residents; they wave back, of course, with polite greetings and a “How have you been?” if they can.

Present as always is the occasional, “Are you two dating yet?” or a, “The boyfriend’s back!”, all in good nature, and Jaehyun smiles and shakes his head and pulls them along just a little quicker, ignoring whatever nonsense comes out of Johnny’s mouth in response—usually along the lines of “Yeah, we’re dating,” or “It’s gonna be our third anniversary next Tuesday, by the way,” and focuses on remembering the way back to their neighborhood—despite it being a path he can draw across his own back with years of repetition.

Johnny doesn’t let go of his hand until they get home, giving it a squeeze before they part in the hallway to their respective bedrooms, and Jaehyun tells himself it means nothing; Johnny’s only being affectionate, as always.

Still, it’s hard to fall asleep that night.

•••

Things happen on the third day—things as in _bad things_ because Jaehyun doesn’t know how else to describe the absolute shitshow that comes plunging its way into the mundaneness of their lives—Manhattan Beach is an expensive place only the wealthy can afford, and with that said, the crime rates have always run low and Jaehyun and the rest of his high school-age friends have never worried about anything that extends past the whole maintaining grades and occasionally sneaking out at night to hang out sort of thing. Typical teen behavior, as some would call it. Anyway. It’s a safe city.

There’s nothing foreboding about how it starts. Johnny drags Jaehyun out of his textbooks and notes with a roll of his eyes and a grin he’s never been able to refuse. Ever responsible (or not, depending on how you look at it), they do leave a note on both their beds in case Jaehyun’s parents wake up before they get back. Then they’re off into the night.

The streets are still alight with people and a few figures remain on the pier by the time they’re in clear view of the beach; they take the shortcut down to the caves because of course they do; they’re reckless and stupidly in love (Jaehyun with Johnny, both of them with the sea) and they’ve been doing this ever since they learned basic rowing skills and the whole “how to swim yourself out of bad situations in the ocean” spiel.

The sea cave is one they’ve claimed as theirs for as long as they’ve known about it and realized few others did—and those few never bothered to go near it anyway—and is what Johnny has always referred fondly to as the hidden jewel of the city.

Because as much as they both love the lights and food and the almost taken-for-granted friendliness of the people—a staple of the city, all of it—nothing has ever compared to the glittering waves and sea-salt taste of the air, a hundred times more prominent within the cool confines of the cave—a place that solely belongs to them, that not even Jaehyun’s other friends know about. A gift from the sea.

Their boat rocks a little with unuse, not dangerously; the waters are calm near the shore and they make it through the cave walls safely, having done this a million times before. The elevation of the stone is high enough that the tides are unable to flood the area and anything left inside for less than two weeks is almost guaranteed to be perfectly untouched, though one can never be too careful with that.

Unfortunately, the cave is where the problem starts. (Of all places.)

“Jae. _Jae_.”

Johnny drops his oar and reaches out to grab Jaehyun’s arm, grip painfully tight, and Jaehyun looks up in alarm. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Look,” says Johnny, eyes wide.

Jaehyun looks.

A cold sensation, almost icy, creeps down his spine and his instincts scream at him to run, heartbeat picking up pace—because whatever the fuck he’s looking at right now cannot be something ordinary.

Something is floating in the water, something that probably washed up earlier—a dark mass Jaehyun’s eyes fail to recognize in the pitch-blackness of the cave—it’s not moving but it’s _large_ , about the length of a fully grown person, twisted in an awkward shape around—

“—Is that a _net_?”

“Fuck, where the _fuck_ is my flashlight,” Johnny mutters, frantically scraping around the bottom of their boat for their supplies. “Jae, can you dock the boat in its usual spot?”

“Johnny, no,” Jaehyun says immediately, but he grabs the second oar anyway, carefully starting to paddle the rowboat left. “Whatever you’re planning—”

Johnny steps out onto the rocks and Jaehyun fights the urge to groan. Hastily, he secures the boat and gets out himself, following Johnny’s figure—if one of them is going to die, they might as well perish together.

Slowly, flashlight in hand, Johnny approaches the shadow in the water and kneels down by the edge of the stone surface. He flicks it on, and Jaehyun’s heart drops to his feet.

What the fuck.

“ _What the fuck_.”

“Is that,” Johnny starts, his whisper sounding more like a panicked wheeze. His hand reaches out to grab Jaehyun’s, fingers ice-cold. “That’s not real. That has to be fake.”

Floating at the surface of the water is what looks to be a person—if you only focus on what’s above the torso, that is. Except it’s not.

Even at first glance, Jaehyun is close enough to see the unmistakable flap of gills on the side of the person’s neck, the skin there tinged a bluish-green. Their face is human, but not quite; it’s too pixielike, features too sharp and almost feline, in a way.

The webbed flaps—fins, probably fins, Jaehyun faintly remembers from the times he’s read on sea creature anatomy—extend from the side of the creature’s head where the ears should be (they might actually be the ears) and also appear around the sides of their torso, dotted with scales that, in the brightness of the flashlight, glitter with too many colors to count. And speaking of scales—they run up the sides of their arms and pattern across their cheekbones, too real to be mistaken for makeup. Just below where the hipbone should be, most of it hidden beneath water that’s too murky for the light of their flashlight to shine through, extends a tail made up of the same multicolored scales on the creature’s upper body.

“That’s real, Johnny,” says Jaehyun, his voice coming out shaky and too high-pitched. “That’s a mermaid.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](http://twitter.com/jaehyuckist)  
> [curiouscat](http://curiouscat.me/yoonohyuck)  
>   
> my deepest apologies for filling the first chapter with so many narrations; i had to get the character + setting backgrounds settled before we continued on our way. the next chapter will have much more dialogue (and ten!!), i promise!!  
> (p.s. there’s no updating schedule but i’ll update as i finish each chapter hh)  
> kudos and comments would be greatly appreciated !!  
> 


	2. cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In hindsight, they should’ve been more prepared for, well, _hostility._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're back, baby! it's ten's time to shine!  
> the [playlist](http://open.spotify.com/playlist/29JRgCYNs5JmXYEmD7ZGKj?si=rT0rlbN9StawJO2z-wnWBA) for this fic  
> 

Honest to God, Jaehyun never thought things would have come to this. Sure, he’s watched The Little Mermaid just like literally every single other kid in his generation has and he’s seen the costumes, heard the fairytales and the conspiracy theories he’d rather not pay attention to, but _this_? This is a whole new level he’s never experienced in his life, _ever_.

Manhattan Beach is peaceful. It’s peaceful and thus boring, as in _there’s never any action around here_ boring. The weather is mild and the community is safe and his parents have always been loving, and maybe Jaehyun should have been more aware of just how decent of a lifestyle he’s been leading so far because now they’ve got an unconscious mermaid—(mermaid? Merman?)—on their hands with no first aid supplies—(do you even _do_ CPR on mermaids? Can’t they breathe underwater?)—and not a single ounce of marine creature experience in their bodies, excluding the few years Jaehyun had kept a pet goldfish—and what’s worse is, these things aren’t even supposed to _exist_.

If word ever gets out, things would plummet straight to hell. Jaehyun doesn’t want to be on the news. He doesn’t want to deal with interviews and questions from his parents and friends and whatever bullshit fame comes with literally _discovering that merpeople exist_ and scientists coming here and setting up traps in hopes to catch more of them to study; he’s seventeen, for God’s sake—not even out of high school yet, and he doesn’t want to deal with whatever the fuck this is.

The only thing they can do now is—well, Jaehyun doesn’t even know _what_ to do, let alone how to react.

“The _net_ ,” Johnny hisses suddenly, sounding anguished, and it brings his attention back to the situation.

His focus shifts to the fishing net the creature is tangled in, one of those enormous, sturdy ones he’s seen thrown out only from those large-scale ships that work for companies. How it got detached and how this creature managed to get caught in it _and_ drift all the way here, he has no clue. But there’s a rightful anger directed towards the inhumanity of it all—of the way the merman is bent at an awkward angle and how the wiry net fibers seem to be digging into his skin, leaving red marks—and Jaehyun feels it rise in himself.

“I’m going down,” Johnny says, not whispering anymore, and before Jaehyun can say anything about being careful, he slides down the side of the edge and into the water, shivering a little by the time he’s shoulder-deep. Carefully, he hooks an arm around the merman’s upper body and tugs him to his side, and Jaehyun hurries to meet them on the side where the rocks slope into the sand of the water.

Together, they manage to drag the body onto dry land, tail and all, and immediately set to work trying to untangle the net. It’s difficult—the fibers catch on the scales and Jaehyun winces when they tug a little too hard because it must hurt, but his resolve sets when they get half the damn thing off and there’s an ugly gash on one side of the creature’s tail that has stopped bleeding but is definitely deep enough to be a serious injury; it’s probably the reason why the merman wasn’t able to get himself free in the first place.

By the end of the whole ordeal, the net is tossed aside and Johnny is collapsed half on top of Jaehyun, both of them drenched in seawater to some extent.

“ _What the fuck_ ,” Johnny exhales, and Jaehyun wholeheartedly agrees.

They decide to leave it at that for now; a glance at his phone informs that it’s well past midnight and things are way, way too confusing for them to solve in one breath. Additionally, they still need to take showers from the wet sand that clings onto their arms and legs now and whatever other grime comes from seawater once it’s dried.

“So, what now?” Jaehyun asks when they’ve returned the boat, the excuse of “ _w_ _e had too much fun and flipped the boat on accident_ ,” ready on their tongues. “Should we go back tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Johnny says, and he sounds exhausted, voice dry. “During the day—and let’s bring the first aid kit too. I know jack shit about treating wounds, but we can always look stuff up from reliable sources.”

His hands clench around their bag of supplies, knuckles turning white. Not in anger; Johnny rarely ever gets angry, and when he does it’s ten times less obvious and more terrifying. Here in the moonlight, he’s hunched over, face shadowed by the crease in his brows. “If we tell anyone…”

“—They’ll hunt them all down."

“God, I guess it really is up to us now, huh.”

Silently, Jaehyun scoots a little closer, leaning his head on the elder’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out,” he says quietly. Reassuring.

“Like we always do, right?” Johnny’s smile is crooked but trusting, body lax despite the sudden pressure to his side, and Jaehyun’s heart shouldn’t skip a beat like the lovesick teenager he is given the situation they just came out of, but it does.

“Like we always do,” he agrees, and takes the hand Johnny offers him as they rise to head back home.

•••

They sneak the first aid kit from the upstairs bathroom into a bag with the rest of their “boat supplies”, as they call it in front of Jaehyun’s parents, which in reality is a clutter of wrapped seafood and a large book on sea creature anatomy they managed to dig out from the storage room earlier in the day. Jaehyun spent practically the entire night without rest; he _couldn’t_ sleep, not when the humanoid face of the merman lingered in his mind every time he closed his eyes. It was enough for him to forgo sleeping altogether to spend hours poring over the web, searching for any trace of evidence that has been recorded of the species’ existence, and somewhere between four to five am Johnny comes in and sits down at the foot of his bed with his own laptop. They share a look; Jaehyun tosses him an energy drink, and the silent conversation ends there.

It’s their perfect behavioral records in school, Jaehyun’s grades combined with Johnny’s overachieving ass, and a bit of luck that the only mention of their sneak-in the next morning is a stern but understanding look from his mom as she reminds them to always stay in an area where other people are.

Normally, it’s an easy agreement—a matter of safety, because they know all too well of the accidents anyone can be prone to without ground rules when spending time near the ocean. To know that they’re willingly, straight-up lying to her face is unpleasant, sure, but the circumstances of whatever they’re about to dive headfirst into are simply outside the box of expectations and far too uncertain to be restrained by a rule meant for the late-night games she thinks they’re playing.

So Jaehyun sighs and agrees and ignores the twinge of guilt in his chest when his mom smiles at them, doting, and continues cooking lunch without another reprimanding word. He hopes they won’t give her a reason to worry.

Getting to the cave without breaking a sweat is easy enough; everything is muscle memory from those three years Jaehyun spent in crew club and the countless times he’s sneaked out to the cave by himself to do homework or take pictures or Facetime Johnny without his parents overhearing anything because their walls are thin and Jaehyun likes his privacy, okay—but then they arrive, and everything goes downhill from there.

In hindsight, they should’ve been more prepared for, well, _hostility_.

With that being said, Johnny just manages to steady them as they both rear back from the sudden, almost ear-piercing shriek that greets them as the boat slides into the cave.

The merman is awake. Obviously.

His tail is arched up threateningly from the water, similar to how a cat’s fur stands on end when it feels unsafe, and the webbed flaps on both sides of his head expand as he continues to hiss—the sound almost tinny, muted, like his vocal cords are weakened in the air, and Jaehyun faintly wonders how much louder the noise would be underwater.

“Okay, okay—Johnny, can you—” Johnny tries to move towards one side and is sprayed with a faceful of water, “—fuck, he won’t let you near the post, okay—um.”

Pausing, Jaehyun takes a deep breath and leans into the center of the rowboat, making sure it won’t tip over, and raises his hands.

The merman has stopped hissing. His eyes still blaze with a wild sort of fury that Jaehyun thinks is definitely justified, given the terrible experience he’s presumably just had with humans.

And then, shockingly—

“Out. Get out.”

English. Slightly accented with another language Jaehyun can’t quite grasp at—hell, it probably isn’t even a language he knows of, but English nonetheless.

“Wait,” he scrambles, panicking. What is he supposed to say? _Sorry? We just got here? Please don’t scream at us because it’s going to give you away?_

“Wait, hold on—we’re not here to hurt you.”

The merman stares at him, piercing.

“We’re _not_ , I promise. I don’t have a single weapon on me.” To prove his point, Jaehyun spreads his arms and gestures at his pocketless T-shirt.

“We found you last night.” Johnny edges near the side of the boat. “You were injured, so we took you onto dry land and got the net off.”

At the mention of the net, the merman’s tail flicks, but he looks slightly less furious now.

“We came back to check on you, and um, we also brought food in case you needed it.” Feeling a little foolish now, Jaehyun holds up the drawstring bag.

“I’m no lab experiment.”

“We have no intention of making you one,” Johnny answers, firm. “If we wanted to tell people about you we would’ve done it already. Please let us out.”

For a long moment, there’s only the sound of the distant waves, and Jaehyun is suddenly very aware of his every inhale and exhale, of the unreadable look in Johnny’s eyes as he holds the other’s stare.

“One wrong move,” the merman warns, though he’s backing up now, “one wrong move, and I’ll kill you both.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Johnny says flatly, but his form is rigid as he carefully leans over to tie their boat to the makeshift post. The merman watches him carefully, and with the tension finally eased to a point, Jaehyun notices that his tail, despite the pretty scales, is shaped much more similar to a shark’s, with its asymmetrical caudal fin and stiff shape, exceptionally long, and it flicks back and forth as Johnny steps out of the boat.

Jaehyun gets out as well, hyper-aware of the pair of non-human eyes burning into his side.

“So, do you just…” Awkwardly, Johnny gestures between the ground beneath them and the merman. “Do you just not like the land?”

Jaehyun almost laughs. Leave it to Johnny to lighten up a strange situation with an even more out-of-place comment.

Huffing, the creature flicks his tail a second time, splashing a bit of water onto their shoes, and mutters something that sounds like “ _fucking humans._ ”

“Contrary to what your kind probably believes, I’m a lot more fish than human. Not a fish either, though.” He scrunches his nose. “Don’t ever call me a fish. I’ll drown you.”

“So what are we supposed to call you then?”

The merman narrows his eyes, curling his tail inwards. “Give me your name first.”

“Johnny,” Johnny says immediately. “Johnny Suh. Eighteen years old, born in Chicago.” He rattles it off like he’s introducing himself on _America’s Got Talent_ , and the merman raises an eyebrow.

Jaehyun decides he’d better follow suit.

“Jaehyun Jung, seventeen years old,” and then, figuring the creature probably doesn’t know what or where Seoul is, “I live here. Near this cave.”

The merman stares at him for a second, contemplating, and blinks. “Neither of you will be able to pronounce my full name,” he says with a resigned edge, “so, Ten. I’m Ten. Yes, like the number,” he adds, shooting Johnny a look when the latter opens his mouth. “I’m…What is it in human years? Seventeen, I think.”

“Oh,” Jaehyun says before he can stop himself. “You’re my age?”

“I suppose,” the mer— _Ten_ —says and swims closer, peering at them with a spark of curiosity subduing his initial anger.

Seeing him up close, Jaehyun realizes that despite the slight differences in facial structure, Ten does look very young, more boyish than adult, and even more so—Ten is very, _very_ pretty.

Not that Jaehyun hasn’t noticed, but there’s something about the delicate shape of his face framed by tufts of silvery, multicolored hair that is distinctly regal, powerful; his eyes are sharp and almost catlike, a cold, gunpowder blue tint to the dark of his irises that certainly cannot belong to any human.

And he shouldn’t, not when Ten has a death threat hung above their heads with quite a bit of truth behind it, but he wonders how things could have gone differently under more normal circumstances. If Ten was human, or if Johnny and Jaehyun were merpeople.

Subconsciously, he glances at Johnny and finds that the latter’s eyes are wider than usual, jaw a little slack—so, he’s not the only one who finds Ten incredibly attractive.

Ten glances between them and huffs. “Why are you both looking at me like that? I could eat you if I wanted to.” He bares his teeth; they’re sharp, pearly white, almost jagged shapes, and it’s probably just the idiocy in himself, but Jaehyun is much more intrigued than afraid at this point. There’s a clouded fear at the back of his mind because human instinct is inevitable and he’s not _that_ stupid, but it’s layered over by too many other factors.

“You haven’t killed us yet,” Johnny points out.

“Because you’re both harmless.” Ten ducks back into the water for a few seconds only to prop himself up against the edge of the stone so that half his torso is lifted out of the water, droplets running in rivulets down his collarbones. “My kind is extremely perceptive to any sort of creature,” he explains, “so I came closer to see if you two were actually dangerous or not.”

“And we’re not?” Johnny sounds offended.

Ten laughs, a light, thin sound, but no less vibrant. “No,” he says, eyes twinkling, “I’ve seen humans much worse than the both of you. You’re… I’d say you’re about as scary as a pair of sea turtles. Small and cute, mildly dangerous when they’re angry, but nothing I can’t handle.”

“What are you then?” Jaehyun asks, some of the tension releasing from his shoulders.

Ten flashes him a mirthful smile, all teeth and brightness. He has an intimidatingly pretty smile—disarmingly gorgeous. Jaehyun doesn’t know if he should be scared or not.

“A sea turtle predator, of course."

•••

“So, you guys migrate?” Johnny asks, half a granola bar in his mouth.

“Only some colonies.” Casually, Ten reaches over and snatches the remaining half from Johnny’s hand, eliciting an indignant “ _Hey!_ ” from him. “Mine is kind of…What do you call it? A resting stop?”

“A rest area,” Jaehyun affirms as Ten peels off the plastic wrapper and stares at it in disgust. “Uh, here, I’ll throw it in the trash once we go back to the pier.”

According to the last hour and a half—in which they figured out that their first aid supplies do not, in fact, work on someone whose body is mostly fish, and that merpeople heal much faster than humans—Ten has grown comfortable enough to explain a couple of things.

Firstly, he lives quite far from the coast, and apparently no merperson ever ventures out without keeping a several-mile distance from the shore—which, great, how convenient for their situation. Anyone lost is assumed to be lost forever (dead) unless they return; Jaehyun and Johnny had both shared a horrified look, to which Ten rolled his eyes at and said, “Whose fault is it that we have these kinds of rules?”

Dubiously, they had both answered that it’s them—humans, to be more specific—and Ten had looked mildly pleased before popping another piece of kimbap in his mouth and mumbling that “ _at least you’re self-aware._ ”

Secondly, Ten had gotten into a petty argument with his sister and swam away to calm down, except in his frustration he went too far and straight into fishing territory, where the whole incident with the net happened. He’d escaped without being seen clearly and the fishermen probably assumed they had caught a shark, with the close resemblance of the lower halves of their bodies and all—which is how he ended up with a bullet grazing the upper side of his tail, slowing his agility in the water and hence leaving him susceptible to danger.

The injury will take a while to close up, and though the cave is deep enough to hide him within its hollows, Ten can no longer leave due to its close proximity with the shore, where he might risk being seen if he goes back out into the ocean.

All in all, it’s a risky situation. He’s accepted their food, though, which Jaehyun takes as a good sign.

“Anyway,” Ten continues, biting off a large chunk of the granola bar, “A rest area. That’s what our settlement is like for them. They stop by every year and we tell them where to go and where to avoid going, where the fishing boats frequent, so on.”

“That’s… actually really cool.” Resting his head on Jaehyun’s shoulder, Johnny crosses his fingers in his lap. “Must be fun, living under the sea.”

Ten shrugs. “Eh, it’s not much. I grew up underwater, so it probably feels the same compared to how you guys live on land. Our only real dangers are humans.”

“Uh, aren’t sharks also dangerous?”

“Sharks are adorable,” Ten snorts. “All the merchildren love to swarm the ones that pass by and attach to them until they’re out of the area—it’s a thing we do as kids. They don’t mind.”

“Kinda like us with dogs, then.”

“See? We’re not that much different from you, except we know better than to pollute our own environment.”

Jaehyun hums, mouth curving up. “True. You’re cooler though, all of you.”

Laughing, Ten makes a little twirl in the water. “Obviously.”

Talking with Ten is easy. It comes easy, the words. He’s not exactly sure why that is, but Ten emits a trustworthy feeling over the intimidation; he’s not one to shy away from blunt honesty and makes his views on things clear, yet also maintains a comfortable openness, and Jaehyun talks.

There’s really not much to start up a conversation with, but Ten’s thoughts move faster than his mouth and he trips over words sometimes, having so much to say, and Jaehyun has no qualms to sitting there and feeling the occasional ocean breeze finding its way through their small part of the cave as he shoots back appropriate responses to Ten’s spiels.

Johnny takes the opposite initiative and asks questions. They’re tinged with awed elation, a wonder that brightens the grin on his face, his excitement barely containable, and it rubs off on Jaehyun as well—as it always does—the muscles holding up his smile are growing tired, but he can’t help it. It seems to please Ten, their interest. He’s glad.

In the end, they have to leave when the sun begins to disappear beneath the ocean horizon. Ten makes no protest, so they slip all the wrappers back into their bags and step back into their rowboat and promise to come back as soon as they can, preferably tomorrow.

“You’ll be okay, right?” Johnny asks before he grabs his oar.

Ten rolls his eyes, bringing his hands to the side of the boat. “If anyone comes by I’ll eat them myself, so stop worrying.” Despite his words, his knuckles pale from where he’s clenching the wooden edge.

“We’ll come back tomorrow,” says Jaehyun. It pulls a smile from the former.

“You’d better.”

Johnny grins at the two of them; Jaehyun returns it, and Ten glances between them both and shakes his head, giving their boat a shove towards the cave entrance.

“Bye, idiots.” He’s beaming.

“See you later, Ten,” Jaehyun calls back.

Johnny follows it. “We’ll be back to bother you!”

“Lucky me!” comes the humored retort, and Ten has disappeared beneath the water again; Johnny bursts into gleeful laughter and falls into Jaehyun’s side and it rocks the boat dangerously and they both nearly lose their balance, but it’s great, _they’re_ great, and Jaehyun has a feeling the next few weeks are going to be exhilarating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](http://twitter.com/jaehyuckist)  
> [curiouscat](http://curiouscat.me/yoonohyuck)  
>   
> no, ten doesn’t eat people lmao but he’s capable of many, many things and eating humans just happens to be a useful threat to keep on hand.  
> povs will start switching next chapter :)  
> kudos and comments are much appreciated !!  
> 


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